Why’d Facebook cut this? Shared to the Chicago Public Square Facebook page Friday: Stephen Robinson’s column at Public Notice, “What’s wrong with the fact-checkers?”
■ It featured this quote from Robinson: “Trump’s statements are decontextualized, while those from Democrats are relentlessly scrutinized. The impact is a proliferation of false equivalencies that normalize Republican liars.”
■ Ironically and puzzlingly, Facebook’s “fact-checkers” took it down, with this explanation: “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way. … This goes against our Community Standards on spam.”
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■ As of Square’s deadline today, Facebook said an appeal of that decision was “in review.”
■ Note: An identical post to Facebook’s sibling Threads went unmolested by that platform’s “content enforcers.”
■ Wired’s Steven Levy—also Friday: Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is “handing its conservative critics just what they wanted.”
■ Media watcher Oliver Darcy: Facebook, other Big Tech platforms and the corporate news media have noticeably relaxed the guardrails they established around Trump after the 2020 election.
■ Twitter X overlord Elon Musk over the weekend amplified a misogynistic tweet asserting that “a Republic of high status males is best for decision making.”
‘He also defied one of the last conventions in our politics that he hadn’t yet broken.’ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce: “Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery was more than an unconscionable breach of humanity.” (Behind a paywall, but the free Postlight Reader browser extension will get you in.)
‘Harris left Trump standing alone in the pit, covered in mud, with nobody to wrestle.’ Public Notice’s David Lurie says Kamala Harris is “cutting off Trump’s political oxygen” by refusing to take the bait from Trump—or the media.
■ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer: “Trump is freaking out about abortion,” because “Harris has made his big political problem much worse.”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “Lies curdle quickly—that’s why Trump has to keep spewing them.”
■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow updates “the continuing adventures of MAGA-Man and his youthful sidekick, Fertility Lad”—now joined by “the legendary Roadkill Warrior.”
■ Popular Information: A murderer whose life sentence was commuted by Trump has been convicted of domestic violence.
Thanks, Electoral College. Because of the antidemocratic impact of the U.S. Constitution’s Article II, Section 1, presidential candidates Harris and Trump this fall will be largely ignoring all but seven states (not including Illinois).
■ A University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor: The Electoral College “tells bad guys where to target their efforts.”
Death on the CTA. Four passengers were shot and killed on a Blue Line train early Labor Day morning.
■ It happened in Forest Park, whose mayor says the victims were shot point-blank as they slept.
■ Police report no indication of a robbery and consider the killings to have been random.
■ The victims were identified as three men and a woman.
■ A suspect was later arrested on a Pink Line train.
■ The Tribune calls it “the deadliest incident of gun violence on a CTA train in a decade—possibly ever.”
■ And then, hours later, a man was stabbed and critically wounded in a fight on a Red Line train.
Check that booking. Hotel workers’ strike against three big chains had expanded to nine cities as of this morning.
■ The AP: The strike reflects the frustrations of a workforce whose members are largely women of color.
Solar countdown. Just one week left to sign up for the current round of Solar Switch, the group-buying program to help Chicago-area homeowners considering solar panels for their homes …
■ … one incentive for which, the Trib’s Nara Schoenberg explains, is set to decline next year.
So long, Sears. Demolition’s begun at the long-vacant Hoffman Estates world headquarters for the place where once America shopped.
■ Although not a single Sears store remains in the Chicago region, a handful were still open around the country as of early this year.
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